Table of Contents

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Eurobarometer 65.1: The Future of Europe, Transborder Purchases in the European Union, and Family Planning, February-March 2006 (ICPSR 20321)

Principal Investigator(s):Papacostas, Antonis, European Commission

Summary:

This round of Eurobarometer surveys diverged from the standard Eurobarometer measures and queried respondents on their opinions regarding the future of Europe, consumer protection for transborder purchases, family planning, and overall opinions and experiences of making transborder purchases within the internal market of the European Union (EU). The first part of the interview concerned the future of Europe. To start the interview, respondents were asked
questions regarding their knowledge and s... (more info)

This round of Eurobarometer surveys diverged from the standard Eurobarometer measures and queried respondents on their opinions regarding the future of Europe, consumer protection for transborder purchases, family planning, and overall opinions and experiences of making transborder purchases within the internal market of the European Union (EU). The first part of the interview concerned the future of Europe. To start the interview, respondents were asked
questions regarding their knowledge and support of EU enlargement, as well as their interest in domestic and European affairs. Respondents gave their views on decision-making at the European level, the effects of European unification, the possible harmonization of social welfare systems within the EU, and the impact of the euro. Next, questions were asked regarding consumer protection in the internal market of the EU. Respondents gave their views on consumer security for transborder purchases, the return of products within a cooling-off period, consumer contract terms, and the purchasing of financial services. Questions were also asked regarding the receipt of unsolicited advertisements that may be fraudulent, deceptive or misleading, respondents' experiences with cross-border shopping, the purchase of travel packages within the EU, and the overall provision of safety information for consumers. The third portion of the interview collected information on respondents' views in regard to family
planning. Questions were asked regarding ideal family size, the timing of giving birth to and raising children, decision-making in having another child, and the future of respondents' household situations. Respondents gave their views on the roles of men and women in raising children, the ideal ages for men and women to have children, and solutions for potential shortages in the workforce. The last topic of the survey addressed consumers' overall opinions and experiences within the internal market of the EU. A series of questions addressed the impact of the European Single Market, transborder purchases of
goods and services, and the potential for travel or change of residency to another member state in order to work or to attend school. Respondents gave their views concerning citizens' rights in the Single Market, seeking assistance within the Single Market, as well as their preferences in taking out a mortgage or insurance policy in another member state of the EU. Background information includes respondent's age, gender, parental origin of birth, marital status, left/right political self-placement, occupation, age when they stopped full-time education, household composition, national provenance, telephone equipment, attendance at religious services, and possession of major consumer durables.

Study Description

Citation

Papacostas, Antonis. Eurobarometer 65.1: The Future of Europe, Transborder Purchases in the European Union, and Family Planning, February-March 2006. ICPSR20321-v2. Cologne, Germany: GESIS/Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributors], 2010-06-03. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20321.v2

The original data collection was carried out by TNS Opinion and Social on request of the European Commission.

The codebook and setup files for this collection contain characters with diacritical marks used in many European languages.

The documentation and/or setup files may contain references to Norway, but Norway was not a participant in this wave of Eurobarometer surveys. This collection contains no data for Norway.

A split ballot was used for one or more questions in this survey. The variable V736 defines the separate groups.

Methodology

Sample:
Multistage national probability samples.

Weight:
Please review the "Weighting Information" section of the
ICPSR codebook for this Eurobarometer study.

Mode of Data Collection:
face-to-face interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2007-08-02

Version History:

2010-06-03 The data have been further processed by GESIS. The SPSS, SAS, and Stata setup files, Stata system file, and codebook have been updated. The SPSS portable file also has been replaced with an SPSS system file. The SAS transport (XPORT) file has been replaced with a SAS transport (CPORT) file. A tab-delimited ASCII data file has been added.